Q&A - Geoffrey Shields: Vermont Law School

Vermont Business Magazine, Jul 01, 2005 by Smith, Robert

Geoffrey Shields of Chicago was named Vermont Law School President and Dean in March 2004 and begin serving as of August 1, succeeding L Kinvin Wroth, who bad served since 1996.

Shields is a partner and past chairman of the Management Committee of the law firm of Gardner Carton and Douglas, based in Chicago and Washington, DC. The firm specializes in securities law, nonprofit corporation law and health law.

He graduated from Harvard University, magna cum laude, with a degree in economics in 1967, and from Yale Law School in 1972. He was the editor of the Yale Law Journal, and a winner of the Mitas Prize. Between Harvard and Yale, Shields' lived in Vermont, worked at the Experiment for International Living in Brattleboro and was an adjunct professor of economics at Marlboro College.

Shields served as a law clerk for Judge James Oakes of the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, from 1972 to 1973. From 1973 to 1976, be served as assistant counsel to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as counsel and foreign policy advisor to Senator Frank Church. In 1977, Shields was special assistant to the secretary of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1976 he joined Gardner Carton and Douglas. Shields lives on a farm in Guilford with his wife Genie, who is an author and educator He serves on the board of the Brattleboro Retreat. Robert Smith interviewed Shields in his office on the VLS campus in South Royalton.

VBM: Let's start with a history of the school. It started in the early 70s...

Shields: The first class graduated in 1976. The principal movers behind Vermont Law School were Tom Debevoise, who had been Attorney General. It was hard to make money as a working lawyer in this state, so he returned to Washington, DC and practiced utilities law there for about 20 years and then came back here to be dean. The chairman of the board was Jerry Waterman, who was then a Second Circuit court of Appeals judge. They had the not-easy task of taking this unlikely location and an old K-12 schoolhouse that had not been used for 15 years, that had been abandoned and was being used as a warehouse when it was first purchased.

Between the two of them they were able to assemble an extraordinary group. They got the Dean of the NYU Law school to be on the board. They persuaded a number of the leading practitioners in the state, including Phil Hoff and Judge Frank Billings, and a number of other luminaries, to join the board. They were a group of leaders in the state who rallied around and said, look, it's a good thing for Vermont to have a law school. It will contribute to the brain power that will be available for business, it will be available for government, it will be available to get us through some of our really prickly issues in the state. And at the same time, maybe we can make some contribution to the larger legal world.

They were funded early on in part by Laurence Rockefeller. Tom Debevoise had been Rockefeller's lawyer and Rockefeller spent much of the year down in Woodstock. He was interested and he was generous in the early years. That helped financially. Unfortunately, he didn't create a large endowment, but it was helpful.

Very early on, they decided that it would be logical to focus on the environment. Rockefeller was interested in the environment, Debevoise was interested in the environment, and they persuaded a guy named Norman Williams, who was then the top lawyer in the country on land use - he'd written a six volume treatise on land use and was a professor at Rutgers Law School - and they persuaded him to come up to Vermont. Together, Norman Williams and Debevoise and Waterman persuaded Dick Brooks to become the first head of the Environmental Law Center. This year, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Center.

The Center has had a series of really good, strong leaders. It has a very good advisory group, some of whom are businesspeople in Vermont. It has created an international reputation to such an extent that for 19 of the last 14 years, the law school has been ranked the top law school in the country by U.S. News & World Report magazine in terms of its environmental program.

There was magic in differentiation, as all business guys reading this would know. If you've got a business that has differentiated itself from your competition, it helps you to be able to maintain your place and to attract business. That's certainly been true for us. We continue to put a lot of our focus on the environmental area, but we also put a significant amount of our resources on those skills which are helpful for the business community in this state. For example, we're doing more and more with intellectual property. That is of growing importance in terms of the kinds of business that is being done in Vermont. We're dealing with a knowledge-based economy, and the protection of that knowledge base is important. Being able to maintain copyrights and patents, maintain business secrets, and entering joint ventures and being able to use that kind of intellectual property as well as protect your own is important.